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When kids of Congress members cross the line

The sons of Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) and Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.) also have had run-ins with the law over drugs, in 1998 and 2003, respectively.

Brandon Chabot, the son of Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio), was charged in February 2012 with felony breaking and entering. Police arrested the then-22-year-old for allegedly shattering glass to get into a building near Miami University of Ohio, where he was attending college, and pulling a fire alarm. Cops who arrived on the scene said Chabot appeared intoxicated and was covered in leaves that he had apparently fallen into.

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Chabot’s office did not return a request for comment, but a spokeswoman told the Cincinnati Enquirer at the time that the lawmaker’s son was a top student with no previous run-ins with the law.

Joel Weinberger, a psychology professor at Adelphi University in New York , speculated that one possible explanation for the raft of arrests might be workaholic political parents who are home less often, leaving their children emotionally vulnerable. He said that some kids of powerful parents also might feel emboldened to act out.

“One thing that’s pretty obvious is there is a kind of rich-kid syndrome — it’s about entitlement,” Weinberger said.

But others argue that political families aren’t any different from others.

“The problems that members’ families have are the problems that all Americans have. We don’t live in a vacuum,” said former Democratic Rhode Island Rep. Patrick Kennedy, who has battled addiction to alcohol and painkillers. The son of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy added, “We’re plagued by the same challenges that everyone else has.”

In most cases, politicians turn away questions about misbehavior with a plea for privacy. After word of James Barrow’s arrest, the Georgia congressman’s office released a terse statement, calling the incident “an issue between Congressman Barrow and his family.”

In some instances, the arrests have turned into PR problems for the lawmakers. During Bill Nelson’s reelection campaign last year, Republicans called the Florida senator — who had been assailing his GOP opponent as a party boy — a hypocrite and raised his son’s arrest.

And during his hard-fought 2010 reelection campaign, Rahall came under scrutiny after it was revealed that five years earlier he had written a letter on congressional stationery requesting a limited sentence for his son, who had been facing felony robbery charges. House ethics rules state that congressional letterhead may be used only for official purposes. Rahall acknowledged that he should not have used the stationery.

Nathan Daschle, however, said that problem children rarely become a political liability.

“Voters know they are voting for a person,” he said, “not for his or her family.”